The Barley Whispers
Official Newsletter of the
Forest
City Brewers
October 2005 Edition
Next meeting will be held at Shooter’s Bar and
Grill
Wednesday October 19th, 2005
at
7:00 PM
Table of Contents:
President’s Notes –
Page 1
Vice President’s Notes – Page 1
Meeting Notes -
Page 1
Club Event Notes – Page
1
Competition Corner – Page 1
Random Beer and - Page
1
Brewing Notes
President’s Notes:
(Sorry Charlie…)
Vice President’s Notes:
I am pleased to announce that the
Forest
City
Brewers have found a new home for our monthly
meetings. After continued disappointments with The
Olympic Tavern, the club needed to find a space with
both adequate accommodations and some form of
privacy. So, we have made arrangements to hold our
club meetings in the Private Party Room inside
Shooter’s Bar and Grill at Don Carter Lanes.
Shooter’s is offering us this room for free that
they would normally charge at least $50 for use.
They offer a decent selection of bottled beers, and
a full menu of good eats including bar appetizers
and pizza. They will provide a waitress for our
meetings as long as we are making it worth their
while, which I know we all will. The new location
will also offer us a new opportunity to reach out to
possible new members. Don Carter Lanes and Shooter’s
attracts a lot of traffic, and the management has
agreed to let us do whatever type of onsite
promotion we want. I plan to make some flyers and
posters that we can put up the weekend before each
meeting. Let’s all have a great turn out for the
October meeting to say thanks to Shooter’s and Don
Carter Lanes for their support of the Forest City
Brewers.
On an unrelated note, I have recently done some
updating to the
Forest
City
Brewers website. (Big props to the Webdaddy!) The
contest points are all current, and the newsletters
are all updated or archived. I also moved a lot of
the stuff off the front page and into the headline
archive. I am still tinkering with some possible
format changes, and will continue to do updates. If
you haven’t seen it lately, check it out. (
forestcitybrewers.org of course! ) Also, I have
registered for a free email account from
Homebrew.com, and I plan to send all club related
news from there from now on. If you have me on a
mailing list or address book, please make the
change!
This month in the Random beer and Brewing Notes
section, I have transcribed a section of the FAQ
from the BrewBoard at Homebrew.com. The FAQ was
created by a brewer in Japan, known to us as CJinJ
who is well known for his version of IPA that they
call “House of the Rising Sun JPA” – a Japanese Pale
Ale. CJ is a knowledgeable brewer and great help to
those on the BrewBoard. The FAQ is about
cold-pitching your yeast. I started doing this about
6 months ago, and I have had great success with this
method. Faster starts than ever before. Read about
it, and feel free to ask me about it at the next
meeting.
Meeting Notes:
The club meeting was held at The last time in
September. Because of the lack of space and privacy,
there was not much done in the way of discussing
official club business. We briefly set up some
details for the Octoberfest Party, then got on with
our monthly tastings. The September Featured Beer
Style was Honey Brews, which received only on entry,
from me. I easily took first place. Thanks to those
of you who voted for me. The Open Style Contest
received four entries which were sampled, judged,
and placed as follows:
Open Style Contest:
1.
Chuck Nolen – Octoberfest
2. Ryan Cooper – Dry Stout (tie)
2. Ken Schultz – Porter (tie)
-
Dave Denale – Stout
Our Featured Beer Style for October will be
Coffee/Mocha Brews.
Club Event Notes:
Oktoberfest Party!
Date: Sunday, October 9th
Time: 1 PM
Location:
Hamilton
Sundstrand Association North Pavilion (the one
closest tothe entrance).
HS Association Park is on the south side of Newburg
Rd, just west of Stone Quarry Rd, on the west edge
of Belvidere,http://hsprodcma.hs.utc.com/hsc/details/0,4482,CLI1_DIV69_ETI6099,00.html.
Park layout,http://hsprodcma.hs.utc.com/hsc/details/0,4482,CLI1_DIV69_ETI6100,00.html
Details:
* The Club is supplying a keg of Oktoberfest beer.
Bring your favorite mug. An authentic Oktoberfest
stein would be appropriate.
* The Club will supply the meat, buns and charcoal
to cook it. The last I heard this was brats, other
sausages, and possibly smoked pork
shoulder or butt. I also believe they should also
supply the catsup and a good mustard, but that just
ends up with requiring someone to also bring
sautéed onions and peppers. Any volunteers?
* I think the club should also supply paper plates,
napkins, plastic tableware, salt & pepper. It would
make things much easier on everyone.
What do you say Dave and Ryan? (
Note: It shall be done!)
* Everyone should bring a dish or 2 to pass. Plan
on enough for 10-20. Think and plan on excessive
and going overboard in whatever you do.
You may want to think of something interesting and
extra special so everyone will talk about it the
next couple of years. Appetizers, salads, side
dishes, chips, munchies, German heaven and earth
potatoes (I'll cover this one), deserts, healthy
items for reformed fatties like me and the new Rich.
Deserts and munchies things are wonderful for the
whole day. Cheeses and big soft pretzels to push
the authenticity of the event as we continue to
drink to excess would be great ideas. Indian
chicken curry fits in lovely with the whole
immigrant thing going on in
Germany.
Don't let time, effort
or expense be a deterrent. Go for it! Plan ahead,
work it in and think "overboard" with anything you
do.
* You may want to consider bringing a 6 pack of an
Oktoberfest that you want to share. That way we can
visit every "tent" through different
beers. Does this sound like a great idea or what!
* Lawn chairs if you don't like sitting at a picnic
table.
* I believe Niki volunteered to organize a horse
shoe tournament last year so we will be expecting
it.
* Anything else you can think of.
* They have play ground equipment, ball diamond,
volley ball court and plenty of space for the kids.
I can't remember if there is basketball though.
* Plan on staying to help clean up!
Competition Corner:
Announcing the 14th Annual
Chicago Beer Society Spooky Brew Review Homebrew
Competition
The Spooky Brew Review homebrew competition is
celebrating its 14th consecutive year. The newly
opened Emmett's Tavern & Brewing Company location in
Palatine (110 N. Brockway Street) will host the
competition for the first time. As usual, SBR will
feature judging in all categories of the BJCP Style
Guidelines. But the highlight is always the judging
of the special Spooky (scariest) and Smashed Pumpkin
(Worst of Show) categories - these should not be
missed!
So, please plan on entering, judging, stewarding, or
just attending Spooky Brew Review 2005 -- it
definitely doesn't get any crazier than this!
The competition announcement, entry forms, bottle
labels, judge registration/waiver forms, and the
latest BJCP Style Guidelines are all available in
PDF (Portable Document Format). These can all be
read and printed with the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader.
For more info….http://chibeer.org/spooky05.html
Random Beer and Brewing Notes:
Cold-Pitching…It’s not just for the Cubbies starting
rotation anymore!
Q: What is cold pitching?
A: It's just like it sounds. Instead of taking your
yeast out of the fridge and warming it up to room
temperature, you keep it in the fridge until it's
time to pitch it. Take it out of the fridge and
pitch it directly into your cooled wort.
Q: What are the
benefits of cold pitching?
A: Cold pitching gives quicker starts with
less lag time (2-4 hours typically), more vigorous
fermentations (I generally need a blowoff tube),
quicker finishes (3-4 days max for low to medium OG
beers), complete fermentation (near or above the
high-end of attenuation figures for a given yeast),
and healthier yeast for harvesting (I've gone up to
5 generations with the same yeast and probably could
have gone quite a few more).
Q: Tell me more!
A: Cold pitching of yeast works best with
harvested yeast. To harvest yeast, after
transferring your beer from primary, either leave a
pint or so of beer behind or have some pre-boiled
cool distilled water to add to the yeast. Swirl to
get the yeast in suspension, pour it into a large
glass container (I use a 2-liter erlenmeyer flask,
but any large glass jar/bottle is fine), cover the
top with sanitized aluminum foil, and put it into
the fridge. Make sure it doesn't freeze. Ideally you
should brew within the next day or two, but
definitely within a week. Keep the harvested yeast
in the fridge until you're ready to pitch it into
your new wort. Again ideally, the wort should be ~5F
lower than your target fermentation temperature.
Pour off the liquid on top of the yeast, leaving
just enough behind to liquify the yeast. Swirl and
pitch 250 ml (1 cup) to 400 ml (about 1.5 cups) into
the new wort, depending on the original gravity.
Aerate as well as you can, swirl to mix the yeast
into the wort, seal the fermenter, and stand back!
In most cases, fermentation will start within 2-4
hours, with vigorous fermentation starting within 6
hours.
Q: I can't get my wort
that cool with my immersion chiller. Does that mean
I can't cold pitch?
A: No, you can still do it. Until recently, I
used an immersion chiller and couldn't get my wort
chilled to under fermentation temps. I've used the
cold pitching technique in beers as warm as 79F,
which I then continued to cool down with ice bottles
strapped to the fermenter. Even with this continued
cooling, I had lag times of only 2-4 hours.
Q: I normally don't
harvest yeast because I like using a different yeast
for each beer. Does that mean I can't cold pitch?
A: No, again you can still do it. I said
ideally it should be used with harvested yeast.
However, when I make a starter, I follow the same
basic cold pitching procedure. Once the starter is
fermented out, I put it in the fridge and cold pitch
the next day. Lag time is generally an hour or two
longer, but everything else proceeds as usual.
Even with normal-sized starters, you can benefit
from cold pitching. One time several years ago, I
experimented with a small (50 ml) Wyeast pack. I
made a 1-liter starter with 110 g DME -- forgot the
yeast nutrient. On Sunday I put the starter into the
fridge in preparation for Monday's brewing.
On Monday I brewed. OG was 1.053. I aerated with an
oxygen pump for 45 min (as usual), pitching the
yeast slurry directly from the fridge 40 min into
the aeration. I decanted most of the liquid off the
yeast, and then swirled to get it back into
suspension and pitched. The wort temperature was 79F
when I pitched, and I put frozen bottles of ice
around the fermenter to get it down to my desired
fermentation temperature of 68-70F.
Three hours later I opened up the pressure release
and put the airlock on. Fermentation was already
going strong. Temperature at this point was still
76F so I continued cooling the fermenter. At six
hours, the wort was down to 73F, and at nine hours
it was down to 70F -- all in all, it was a fairly
quick drop, but fermentation was steady and strong.
In the morning (at 14 hours), temp was still holding
at 70F and fermentation was vigorous. When I got
back home late afternoon (approx 24 hours after
pitching), I had to put on a blowoff tube (and clean
up the mess). Temp was holding at 70F.
Q: Do commercial
breweries use cold pitching?
A: Yes, that's where I found out about it. I
was helping my friend in his brewpub and he taught
me about cold pitching. He got the idea from a post
on the Association of Brewers Internet forum where a
brewer at a major macrobrewery explained about the
technique. The technical information I've been able
to find out about cold pitching is summarized below.
1. There doesn't appear to be any published research
about it. It seems that it's based on practical
experience rather than any earth-shattering new
discovery. It seems like a number of breweries have
been doing this for a long time.
2. The reasons for storing yeast cold are: 1st, the
beer has no nutrients left for the yeast to use;
2nd, at 34F the yeast are slowed down and aren't
damaged by being too cold (lower than 34F and they
may freeze and die, higher and autolysis may start).
3. The optimum condition (for both lagers and ales)
is to pitch 34F yeast into wort that is 3-5F BELOW
your target fermentation temperature. The yeast
quickly warm up to the wort temperature, and begin
taking in nutrients and oxygen from the wort. That
process produces heat which brings the yeast up to
fermentation temp. In other words, the yeast are
happy to change from their rest phase at 34F to
their active growth phase at your fermentation temp
minus 3-5F. Pitching yeast into warmer wort and then
cooling it to fermentation temp may interrupt or
slow down the growth phase, resulting in longer lag
times.
4. When preparing a starter, do it at fermentation
temperature and once the starter is done, cool it
down to 34F.
